Town's history is steeped in violence

1980s civil war helped to shape Quezaltepeque's young men

Published 5:30 am, Monday, April 25, 2005

QUEZALTEPEQUE, EL SALVADOR - The young men of Quezaltepeque have been killing one another for nearly three decades.

Throughout the civil war of the 1980s, this market town beneath the northern slopes of the San Salvador volcano, about 20 miles northwest of El Salvador's capital, was a battleground. The Salvadoran army held the town center, leftist insurgents the countryside surrounding it.

Many of Quezaltepeque's youths fought for one side or the other, and many died.

El Playon, an infamous dumping ground for the murdered victims of right-wing death squads in the war years, is a few miles southwest of the town. People here called the assassin squads "the Black Shadow." Now, 13 years after the war ended, it seems as if the shadow never lifted.

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Unemployment and poverty still stalk many families who depend on money sent home from relatives living in the United States or earn the equivalent of a couple dollars a day harvesting coffee on large estates.

Since the early 1990s, violent crime has replaced civil warfare, with young members of the Mara Salvatrucha facing off against those of the 18th Street Gang.

The first gang members here were young men who had fled the war to Los Angeles, were arrested for crimes and then deported back to their homeland. But most of Quezaltepeque's gangsters today have lived here all their lives.

Officials list Quezaltepeque, a community of 100,000 people, the country's second most violent community, after the capital, San Salvador.

"They fought for a future," Jayson Orellana, 25, of the 18th Street Gang says of the wartime fighters. "But us? I couldn't explain why we fight. Just for territory, just for the benefit of our gang."

The gangs are a concern for Manuel Flores, 40, Quezaltepeque's leftist mayor. Flores understands youth and violence. He followed several older brothers into the guerrilla ranks when he was 14 years old, and fought here and in Nicaragua during much of the 1980s.

Now Flores dreams of economic development. He hopes to make Quezaltepeque — where $200 a month is considered a good wage and a family of six can earn about $15 a day harvesting coffee — a tourist spot.

But the town is far from the beach and is known mostly for its prison, which houses many gang members.

"We are changing," Flores says in his city hall office, the flag of the former guerillas tucked into a pencil holder on his desk, a portrait of Che Guevara on the wall behind him.

"But how are we going to develop the town if we have this image?"

Taking a cue from others, Flores has begun to find employment for his town's gang members, permitting them to work at stalls in the town's busy outdoor markets or to clear empty lots.

"I don't want to justify the maras," he says, using the local slang for gangs, "but I don't want to demonize them either. The maras are the product of a lack of opportunity.

"There's more poverty, less employment, more violence. By any measure, we are nearly worse off than before."